"mordecai".

i am sitting on my bed, looking at a picture of a hawk named mordecai, feeling ecstatic at several things:
1. i evangelized tonight. in a non-smary, totally holy-spirited initiated and implemented way.
2. i just aced a test i was pretty nervous about.
3. i really, really like krispin.
4. i am going out to breakfast with my mom tomorow!
5. and it's liturgical chapel tomorrow as well!
6. AND FALL! OH MY GOSH IT REALLY IS FALL, ISN'T IT? I COULD JUST HUG SOMEBODY EVERY TIME I COME IN MY BACKYARD AND SEE THIS ONE TREE THAT LOOKS LIKE IT IS ON FIRE BECAUSE HALF OF IT IS BRIGHT YELLOW AND HALF OF IT IS BRIGHT RED, WHICH IS HOW I ALWAYS COLORED FIRE WHEN I WAS A LITTLE KID.
ah.
i decided to be crazy tonight.
i decided to blog on a thursday night, and i decided to blog when i was in a good mood.

blame puberty.

wednesdays are the new blog days.

not only because i have the evening free, but because i am unusually reflective on wednesday afternoons.

today i had a meltdown of sorts. well, it really just entailed me lying on my bedroom floor in a patch of sunlight with my dog circling my head and me begging christ to take away my stress. but the more i thought about it, the more i realized i wasn't stressed. instead, i was afraid.

i'm afraid that i don't have the money i need to pay the lady i hit on saturday. i'm afraid that i will never have a job that i like and that pays well enough. i am afraid of an absolutely empty bank account. i am afraid that i am being half-assed in all of my classes. i am afraid of every assignment, because i know i need to be better. i am afraid of relationships. i am afraid of being dependent on people. i am afraid that god is mad at me, or at least annoyed. i am afraid that i am dissapointing everybody.

but, today was another day with the somali's. we went to the park, and the only thing i taught today was the mechanics behind swinging. once the girls figured out how to do it themselves, they were ecstatic. and then we played on the merry-go-round, the monkey bars, the slide, and the teeter-totter. i was in awe, as usual, at their boundless joy and enthusiasm. i know how horrible their lives can be, but they bounce back so quickly. little kids are resiliant things. and then i was envious. they tried to teach me how to do flips on the bars, but i couldn't do it. have you ever noticed how amazingly agile little kids are? ever since i turned 13 i have progressively felt heavier, sturdier, and thicker.

i curse puberty.

anyways, i need to get back to my mounds of schoolwork. but it is fall, the most romantic time of the year, and i have a four day weekend. what glory!

i shall be grateful.

the others

i'm tired, but i see the light at the end of the tunnel. today i prayed with an old friend, sprawled out on the carpet. i couldn't get up. i feel hopelessly inadequte, and guilt is a constant plague.

but then today i went and sat in majuma and hassan's apartment, i helped cook food for the ramadan feast, and then i sat on the couch to help the girls with their homework. hassan lay curled on the bed, sick and dying, with only a sheet to cover him. majuma was lying on the mattress next to my couch, sick with a headache, and hungry from the fasting. halima crawled up into my lap and promptly fell asleep herself. i laid my head back and soaked in the stillness for 15 minutes.

right now i am watching lost by myself, something i swore i would never do again, and i am working on a grammatical analysis of ephesians chapters 1-3. basically, it's all about the will of God in Christ.

i cry with people, i miss my family, i miss people i see everyday but only in shallow contexts, i hate my job and might actually quit this time, i feel like doing pilates on a more consistent basis, i'm experiencing the ups and downs of being in love, i'm falling asleep ever earlier, and my cat let me cuddle with it today.

thats about it, really.

september. in two sentences.

i'm too busy to blog, too tired to answer my phone, i pee flourescent yellow and take naps on the slide as somalian children swing.
i need some grace, here.

this summer just wasn't my summer

i just watched a documentary called "the boys of baraka." i encourage everyone to watch it, but only if you want to be both inspired and devestated at the same time. it is about a couple of 12 year old boys from baltimore that get sent to school in kenya for a year, and what ultimately happens to them. one of the boys, richard, describes coming home for the summer as this:
"this summer just wasn't my summer. it ran like water."


i started school today, and it made me realize how i am confused as to what happened with my summer. i feel like nothing was accomplished, no ends tied up, no moral or spiritual lessons discovered and applied. it just meandered on, and i tried to live each day as it came. in fact, i think i was constantly trying to make it seem or feel or be better than it actually was.

well, it was a lame summer.

i'm really excited for the fall, and not only because i get to wear a scarf and drink even more coffee and read interesting books, but because i am excited for change. school, in a way, inspires a sense of change for me. it helps me to think, and it helps me to second guess my own thought processes.

i don't live in baltimore. i don't have drug dealers or an abusive mom or cops or a dad who is in prison to deal with.

i just have clackamas.

how does it feel?

summer is winding down, and with it comes a sense of apprehension. an august sense of anticipation, muggy and thick.

last week both of my sisters were home and krispin got back from china. it was a great week, but only emphasized the troubles with loving people. people, especially those in my life, are never stationary. i have to start preparing for a perpetual state of missing people. i know, i know, i should be used to this by now. but i guess i'm not.

i am sick and tired of trying to balance everything in my life and then guiltily comeing to the throne of god to make sure that it is okay with him. something is dreadfully off in my life, because i hardly ever feel content, despite my wonderful life. so i'm scrapping it. my life plans, i mean. from here on out, i'll just do whatever the father says. i'm awfully glad he talks to me and has given me fantastic people in my life and he has also given me christ who intercedes on my behalf.

the other day in church i was having one epiphany after the other, and i decided that i sort of want to be a charismatic again. i had a bad taste of it in my mouth thanks to a former bible college that was a bit too severe in its theology but that taste is beginning to fade. i want to flow, to feel, to discern, to let go of me and mine more often.

i remember as a kid, my mom would take me to all of these tiny little charismatic vineyard churches in square concrete rooms. i remember watching in awe as people sang loudly and full of joy, as overweight women danced around waving flags, as children like myself sat quietly and absorbed the excitement of church.

i feel like that scrawny, blonde-haired kid again. i'm just sitting here, waiting quietly, absorbing the excitement of a life that i am not in charge of.

this one goes out to lindsay.

because she is the only one who reads this, evidently.
well, i've had some adventures recently, which have been great. they involved driving east, awkward conversations, interesting donoughts, police activity, and mysterious youth groups at midnight.

now, i'm off to an even bigger adventure: i am going to los angeles for a week with the abundant life youth group. i haven't been a youth leader in about 3 years. we'll see how i do.
right now i am trying to muster up enthusiasm for the 3 bands that will be playing at the conference we are going to:
superchick. jeremy camp. hawk nelson.

i don't know if i can do it. but i have to try, because i remember what highschool was like. christian pop punk got me through a lot, man. the last thing i want to do is crush the spirit of these kids, and so i need some genuine enthusiasm for the giant marketing ploy that is contemporary christian music.

scratch that cynical last paragraph. i am excited to hang out with both my sisters, to be surrounded by people with boundless energy and enthusiasm, and i am excited to be an example of what it looks like to love jesus at age 22.

22? has it really been 9 years since i first fell in love with mxpx? i feel pretty old right now.

the restless summer.

i am sitting at my garage sale right now. there is not a soul to be seen. it's been like this all morning. it's so hot and muggy i feel slightly insane right now. i was up until 2 in the morning dancing at a club last night. who am i? i had so much fun, it was ridiculous. the summer is halfway over, and i have yet to have any answers. who knew that this would be the restless summer, the summer of not being able to escape yourself? i'm grateful for the growth, or at least i know that i will be at some point in the future. christ is so patient. i can't journal anymore. all i can write down are people that i want to pray for. i guess that's the only thing to do when you love so many people who are so far away both in body and spirit.
i don't blog much anymore because it doesn't seem like this one is quite as mysterious as it used to be.
ah, well.

the pirate summer

today when i woke up the sky was gray and the air felt like we were all at sea, humid and full and slighty cold. it was still and peaceful and it felt different. i felt like i had woken up in homer alaska, that i was back in my most favorite summer. it took me a minute or two to realize that no, that was three years ago and i am here in clackamas, halfway through a confusing and hard summer. i'm cheerful these days, but i miss everything.
i miss my alaska summer.
i miss traveling with my older sister.
i miss croatian bathrooms and coffee and pastries and streets.
i miss going on adventures with krispin.
i miss sacramento, anchorage, mexico, wyoming, auburn, sisters, montana, india, los angelas, croatia.
how does one not live in the past yet let it help shape the future?
seriously. all i want to do right now is drink coffee and look at old photo albums, remembering the grand adventures of the strannigan family. i want to remember, and i want to be assured of the future--that we will continue on in our haphazard life, never fully becoming comfortable where we are.

me and candyce decided last week that this is officially the pirate summer.

rich mullins makes me cry.

my latest adventure:
hassan is dying, and all he wants is to wash in the ocean before he dies. jenni and i decided that it has to be this week or never, seeing as jenni is getting married in 10 days and hassan really is dying (we tried to take him on monday but he was in the hospital). what is he dying from? a multitude of problems: tuberculosis, african parasites, diabetes, and the parasite medicine that made his internal organs start to liquify. he looks like an african that you would see in the pictures of national geographic: emaciated, with hollow cheeks and clouded eyes. the tip of his right index finger is missing, and i have always been too scared to ask why.
me and jenni showed up at 7 this morning to pick up hassan. majuma, his wife, and mohammed, his friend, decided that they are both coming along. luckily for us, mohammed can speak a decent amount of english. we went to camp wi-ne-ma for the day, to kill two birds with one stone: jenni is going to be teaching a session at a jr. high church camp, and i will be taking hassan to go for a swim.
we got in the car. hassan curled up in the front seat, and jenni drove. i was squished in the middle seat between two somali's, and i found that i strangely enjoyed the smell of their sweat. it smells like i imagine africa would, with a hint of ginger. it was very hot in the car, and it was a two hour drive. we listened to somali praise music, which is made with very cheap electronic devices. it was our covert way of trying to convert these dear people.
i spent the entire way down praying, praying that hassan would come to know christ before he dies. i am awash in a love for these amazing people. i wanted to hug bith majuma and mohammed, but i was too snug to even think about moving my arms.
we got to the beach, with barely a minute to spare . . . jenni is supposed to start teaching in 2 minutes. majuma, hassan, and mohammed all used the restroom, and we sat around eating corn on the cob and waiting for hassan to regain his strength.
i kept on telling them that it was going to be cold ("gawowp" in the maay maay language) but they didn't believe me. the only ocean they had been to before was in kenya. they thought it would be exactly the same.
majuma had brought along about 10 different plastic containers (milk cartons, detergent bottles, ect.), and we lugged those to the beach with us. we all stopped and stared once we had a full view. we all agreed that it was very beautiful.
once we got to where the water started, we all dipped our feet in. majuma and mohammed squealed with how cold it was. they handed me some cartons and we started filling them up with ocean water. i turned around to see hassan, standing at the water's edge, stripped down to his boxer shorts.
he looked so sad and so frail, leaning on his cane for support, staring grimly into the ocean preparing to cleanse himself for death. i held my breath. he couldn't possibly go in the ocean. it would kill him for sure.
he stood there for a couple of minutes before he turned and said something to majuma and mohammed. and then he turned around and started putting his clothes on. majuma and mohammed started laughing hysterically.
"what's so funny?" i demanded. "what did he say?"
mohammed looked at me, still laughing. "he say, 'it too cold out here.'"
and that was that.
we hung around at the camp for a oouple more hours, and i had fun showing mohammed and majuma around (hassan had to sit in the car because he was too cold). we were all getting hungry, so i went to the dining hall to see if we could eat there before all the campers came and overwhelmed the refugees. sure, said the kitchen staff. for lunch today we are having ham and hot dogs. hmmm . . . i said, well, my friends are muslim and can't eat either of those things.
one woman, who looked to be in her late 70's, took me by the shoulder and steered me into the kitchen. "dearie," she said, "we'll find something for them to eat." and then to the rest of the kitchen staff: "we have moslems here!"
we were treated like kings. i was so proud of the over-worked jr. high kitchen staff. they were angels in aprons.
finally, jenni was done teaching. we got in the car to go home, pleased with our day. majuma, mohammed, and i all three fell asleep in the back seat. when i woke up, we were listening to rich mullins. he was singing about god being the deliverer of his people, from ancient israel to present day africa. now, i can't get that song out of my head. who better needs deliverance than refugees?
sometimes i think that i feel like a refugee in my own country. but through all my stateless wanderings, i do know one thing: my deliverer is coming, my deliverer is standing by.

people we met in the last five years

here are a couple of firsts for danielle (note: they have all taken place in the past week):

1. i just used the boys bathroom at the bi-partisan cafe. it was exhilerating.

2. i went to a sports bar and watched half a game of the world cup (germany versus poland). not only was it my first time at a sports bar, it was only my second time ever walking into a bar by myself. i felt empowered as i sat in the bar, drinking my coke and cheering for the underdog (as usual).

3. i became a nanny. for rich american kids. who don't watch tv and who order me to play pretend games with them while using a british accent and to cook them gourmet food. this one is a stretch for me.

4. i went bowling in milwaukie with co-workers on $1.25 shoe rental night. enough said.

5. i smoked my first hookah. it made my clothes smell weird, and i felt very middle eastern.

6. i was yelled at today by one of my former volunteers for being judgemental and told that i was going to be written up to the head of catholic charities for my poor job and character. side note: this is not the first time i have been yelled at by a crazy person, but it is the first time i have been yelled at by a crazy person in front of a group of impressionable kids.

i guess there is a first time for everything.

slow and steady wins the race.

have you ever wondered if you were going crazy? not in the poetic, beautiful, loud and crazy sense . . . but more in the quite, small, nobody else ever thinks-like-this sense? i did all the time when i was a teenager.
today i was reminded of that when faced with a gray afternoon all to myself. i had a coupon for a free movie rental from blockbuster but it seemed like the most insurmountble hurdle to actually get in the car and drive to the store and walk in and be greeted with a cheery and indifferent "hello!" and imagine all those people getting ready for their fridays nights when i just want to curl up and be alone and yet i feel pathetic for feeling the way i do because according to popular culture these days i should be living it up, enjoying the best years of my life. these had better not be the best years of my life. in fact, i know that they are not. these years are a shadow of the years to come, just like this life is a shadow of my real life, my life in christ. these thoughts emboldended me enough to grab my little dog, toss her in the car, and brave the forces of blockbuster. in highschool, one of my greatest fears was returning videos to the video store. don't ask me why. it terrified me in ways that i could never articulate. today was another big step.
when i got home i tore up the stairs and put on my gym shorts so i could do some pilates. i was thinking about how maybe i really am a crazy old woman after all when the doorbell rang. the doorbell never rings at this house. my little dog freaked out. i opened the front door, which is creaky from its lack of usage, and found myself face to face with juanita long, the official grandmother of abundant life megachurch, affectionately nicknamed "oma" to everyone who has ever had a conversation with her. she gave me a huge hug (i haven't seen her in a couple of months) and thrust a plastic bag into my hands. it was warm and squishy.
"it's for your mom," she giggled. "it's play-doh for the little kids in alaska. freshly made!" she clapped her hands in delight. i awkwardly thanked her and told her i would give it to my mom when she got home the next day. oma looked at me, looked at the plastic bag full of homemade green play-doh and gave it a little squeeze herself. "doesn't it just feel like babies?" she asked. i just stared at her and wildly tried to think of a response. she didn't really expect one. "just like babies," she said, walking down the steps of our porch. "freshly made babies."
i went inside and realized that maybe i am a little bit saner than i ever thought.

a quote from a book that i loved, grew indifferent to, lost, found, and loved again.

" i cried, i think, because i was coming to understand in a new way just how much was required of me, how much god was going to strip away all my everything, like silver polish taking the tarnish off old forks. i cried because i know more and more how chekov was right, how we are running around desperate to make connections but mostly we are all just estranged. because i know more and more that this glass here is so very dark, that this really is a long loneliness, that it is both lonely and long. sometimes i feel god has taken a paring knife to me. i know the way an apple feels."
--lauren winner, girl meets god.

is it strange that this passage makes me so happy?

my pie, my pie.

this is the pie me and catherine baked this afternoon. we did it from scratch, and i am so, so proud. i was going to name him, but it is always weird when you name something you are about to eat.

here is an update on me:
i have been sad for the past couple of days, but there are a lot of good reasons for that sadness. however, it is not here to stay.
a story:
last night i went out to jenni's parents house and crashed the girls bible study that i used to go to last year. i just really, really needed the tangible body of christ. and it was there, in the form of 6 girls.
my favorite part was when we went outside to make s'mores and we tried to build a fire even though all the wood was wet becuase it had been raining all day and there were baby spiders everywhere and we couldn't really get the wood to catch on fire so we just kept shoving newspaper into the pit and roasting our mallows on the false flames that sprung up and died out quickly and there was ash everywhere in the wind like cheap confetti and i dared jenny to eat a baby spider and she did becuase i said "i double dog dare you" and that phrase is irresistable to jenni douglas and then the skies opened up and it began to pour and all our graham crackers got wet and i shook my stick to the sky and we declared defeat, huddling inside the barn, dripping with water and smelling like wet chickens.

welcome to summer in portland.

when i was a boy i could hear symphonies in seashells.

i just got done with school and now i wake up in the morning thinking about what i should be stressed out about. i just got done with one of my jobs and now i wake up in the morning thinking about what i should be doing that is of worth and value. i just realized all of my bestest friends don't live in portland, and i dread being with people all summer that make me feel stiff and phony. i just realized that i am terrified of being alone, and i think it's because i have forgotten how to enjoy solitude. i just realized that i have been going, going, gone all semester and i feel so tired. not just physically, but tired in my spirit. i keep on rubbing my eyes, waiting for an epiphany about how my summer is going to be one of adventures, or grace, or polish dogs at costco, or happy hour at applebee's . . . but try as i might, i can't conjure up a magical theme. my summer is one of blankness.
now, i suppose i could look at this two ways:
one, i could be super depressed and decide to invest in sleeping all the time and stalking people via myspace.
or two, i could look at this sumemr as an oppurtunity to become more comfortable with myself, with christ, and with myself and christ.
i'd really, really like to go with the latter.

happiness is a warm african baby.

this is baby omar. i love him. i am one of the least maternal people i know but i slung this kid around for almost two hours today. he was such a doll. the small of my back got really sweaty and so i flipped him around to the front and he fell asleep on my stomache. it was great. i ran around, yelled at kids, and colored pictures--all with omar attatched to my side. all the somali men came out to talk to me and told me i was beautiful, and all the somali women clucked and said i looked like a bantu.
i was terribly, terribly happy.
you all should be glad that i didn't blog on monday night, the night i really wanted to. because i was in an awful, stressed-out mood. at work that night, everybody kept asking me what was wrong, which of course made it worse. i couldn't put a finger on any one specific thing that was troubling me--my own apathy, my procrastination, the two papers i had to turn in the next day that i hadn't even started--none of that really got down to the business of what was going on in my heart.
luckily for me, i figured it out once i got into my car and drove home.
i was incredibly lonely for christ.
once i got that figured out, i started to feel like danielle again. i have now had some more danille and jesus time, and i feel more at peace with the world. he (christ) hasn't really said much, but we always enjoy being silent together. tonight we had the best time in the car, with the windows rolled down and our hair blowing in the wind.

one legit, and five non-legit, secrets.

yeah.

sometimes i also feel like sitting in my room and staring out at the gray day when in all actuality there are three papers that i need to be writing at this exact moment.
sometimes i also feel like shaving my head.
sometimes i also feel like walking in to the john g. mitchell library and singing my favorite song really loud and then taking a nap right in the middle of the stacks, on the third floor, right next to the cheesy christian romantic paperbacks.
sometimes i also feel like i have social anxiety disorder, but i have just recently realized that my personal fears are nowhere near as insane (sorry, but it's true) as other peoples. this makes me feel a bit better.
sometimes i still wish i was in a rockabilly band.

this is not a secret: my life is wonderful.

"people are dying. is that an argument in favor of sitting on cats?"--emma thompson, fortunes of war.

i canceled the bridesmaid dress fitting/bride-to-be bonding that was to be had tonight. i am sick of working, sick of of studying, sick of slacking. i'm tired but i sleep all the time. don't get me wrong, this is one of the happiest phases of my life thus far. it's a gorgeous pink spring and i get to live in portland oregon. i have a beautiful gray cat who is starting to ignore me less. i get out of school in 3 weeks. i have a boyfriend and i am not freaking out about it (in fact, i like it very much).
what do you do with an unexpected free night? if you are danielle, this is what you do:
1.take a bath.
2.make some ravioli.
3.read some of donald miller's writing.
a. laugh your face off.
b. soberly question your concept of god.
4. watch a random old movie you found at the library (fortune's of war).
bonus! kenneth branaugh is adorable when he is young. a visionary!
double bonus! the movie is set in the balkans! the balkans!
5.sit and think about your life, and the blessings therein.
6. pray for your sisters (and the kittens they find in azerbaijan that have broken paws).
7. go to sleep early, because it all starts again tomorrow.

that's it.
cheerio, darlings!

a t.v. script ending

there are lots of things i could write about, lot's of little episodes that i have seen played before my eyes that are filled with either beauty or tragedy or sometimes both, depending which way you look at it. but for some reason, i don't want to write about any of those things, instead i want to write about anthony.

anthony is my new manager at starbucks. well, assistant manager anyway. if anyone has ever seen the british t.v. show the office, then they can skip the following descriptive passage. anthony is a thinner, younger, ricky gervais. i thought my first impression ahd been wrong, that nobody could be that spot-on, but it was all too true.

whenever i start work he gets all excited and says "hey hey hey, danielle, do you know what is the number one objective for today?" and without waiting for me to respond, he thrusts his fist into the air and says: "to have FUN!". and then he tries to get me to do this weird hang loose wiggledy handshake with him, but i usually just lamely give him a little tap with my knuckles. i don't know what to do in the face of his boundless enthusiasm for starbucks.
what makes it worse is that he is pretty bad at his job and extremely insecure about it. sometimes when he makes drinks people bring them back and i have to remake them without his realizing because if he does realize it he follows me around for the next half an hour analyzing out loud why the customer didn't like his drink. or take tonight, for instance. he thought the till counting machine had gone berserk, and he was freaking out about having to call tech support and how we weren't ever going to get out of here and geez i don't know what to do and could you come look at it danielle? so i went in the back and he explained how he had unplugged it and plugged it back in and nothing. nothing happened. i looked at the machine, and pressed the "on" button. gentle readers, he expressed amazement at my technical prowress for the rest of the evening.

as much as i can hardly stand to work with him (he literally follows me around and reads out loud from the starbucks corperate policy manual. literally.), i can't help but feel that there is some sort of purpose behind me and him working together so often.

anythony has this habit of spilling his guts to me. we've talked about it before, and he brought it up again tonight: he hates christianity. he used to be a hardcore christian: he was a youth intern, he attended a charismatic mega-church, he even went downtown regularly to witness to homeless people. and then he just stopped. he couldn't stomache it anymore.

the man obviously needs to talk about his past life as a christian, and i don't know why he chose me. i always pray to the holy spirit in times like these to give me wisdom, and he always pulls through. i usually end up asking a lot of questions, and saying fewer profound statements that i would like. but, you have to work with what you have been given. one of my gifts is the ability to feign interest and ask pointed questions.

anyways, the point is, i finally got anthony to tell me why he was so bitter at the church, and it all boiled down to one thing: he thought god had lied to him. he told me his sad story (growing up and wanting to be a medical missionary, having his fiance break up with him, getting horrible grades his senior year of college and not being able to make it into medical school) and i told him mine. except i ended mine with where it is at: i still love christ with everything within me. i don't have a rational explanation, i just do. i love him because he first loved me, and i know that someday soon i will understand all the twists, turns, and disappointments that seem to be a prerequisite of the honest christian life.

to make a long blog semi-shorter, anthony said he had a lot to think about tonight. so do i. mainly, why does comfort always have to be preceded by suffering?
i guess i'll let everyone know when i figure out the answer.
then you'll be happy.

little luda

today i went and hung out with some of my favorite people in the world who happen to be somali bantu refugees. i went with my friend jenny, and it was good to be with her again. we used to call ourselves paul (jenny) and barnabas (me). 6 months ago, when i was still living with her, we envisioned planting churches together, moving into low-income houseing together, and being single women missionaries together for the rest of our lives (or at least the next 3 years). 5 months ago she told me that she gave her heart to joel and she was easing out of the somali ministry. today was the first time i have gone to the apartment complex with her in 4 months.
well, it was great. instead of me being the homework club nazi, i sat on a couch in a strange smelling apartment and watched life being lived in front of me.
maybe it was because i had already worked 8 hours today at starbucks, or maybe it was because i was passive aggressively wanting to get back at jenny, but i seriously just sat on the couch in seynab's apartment for four hours while jenny cooked a meal, led songs, and organized games for about 20 people.
strangely enough, i didn't feel guilty.
i was, as jenny later called it, a "human mosh pit". there was a rotating cast of kids who would sidle up to me, lay their heads on my knee, slip thier hand into mine and sort of sidle on up into my lap. at one point i had five 3 year old boys trying to cuddle with me simultaneously. at another point i had 4 different girls, their hands full of chicken grease, trying to braid my hair but giving up quickly due to the fact that they had never tried braiding a white girl's hair before. we watched wallace and gromit. we tried (and failed miserably) to put together a little mermaid puzzle. we listened to somalian music, and danced our ever-loving little hearts out. but mostly, we just on the couch. we sat there and basked in the collective glow of the shared company.

i could have lived my whole life there but unfortunately i had to make an appearence at a certain birthday party because jenny had already promised that we would be there. we went to flying pie and met up with a group of about 25 kids from our church, and we wished our friend the happiest of birthdays. i sat down at a table and listened to the conversations going on around me: worship music, shoes, chocolate, shitty scream-o bands (sorry mom, but it's true), and various other topics. i sat with my elbow on the table, propping my head up in order to look interested. but i wasn't interested in the slightest. not in any of those subjects.

i am slowly, slowly, coming to the realization that i will always feel more comfortable on a sour-smelling couch in a stuffy african apartment than i will ever feel at a crowded, lively pizza joint on a saturday night.
i know. that realization is shocking.
absolutely shocking.